At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have. For some, this is power. For me, it is peace.
Time and again human consciousness fixates, and slams the door on its greatest gift, the open-endedness of infinite possibility. As a result we do not experience reality but merely our concept of it.
The purpose of computers is human freedom.
Whoever wants to be a judge of human nature should study people's excuses.
It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. Until you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know.
The Berbers, among whom even today one finds light skins and blue eyes, do not go back to the Vandal invasions of the fifth century A. D. , but to the prehistoric Atlantic Nordic human wave. The Kabyle huntsmen, for example, are to no small degree still wholly Nordic (thus the blond Berbers in the region of Constantine form 10 % of the population; at Djebel Sheshor they are even more numerous).
Nonviolence is absolute respect for each human being.
Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog. He has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn't hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master he eats when he is hungry and sleeps when he is tired. He's not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to imitate.
Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.
Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.
The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.
The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is, as such, the true underlying support on which the improvement of the human species rests. The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs; the former are the thinking and designing [ Entwerfende ] part, the latter the executive part.
Father taught us that opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand. I think we all act on that principle; on the basic human impulse that makes a man want to make the best of what's in him and what's been given him.
I've learned it's a human responsibility to create fun, not just wait for it.
For me, every human is a little bit an exaggerated version of a real human - in most cases, they are versions of myself. I am someone deeply motivated by extremes - the poles not only become home for me, but they also become, strangely, my comfort zones.
You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.
The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence.
A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight!
The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
Success means different things to different people. To me, the greatest quality of successful human beings is the ability to love.